Geography

Formerly
divided into two nations, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and the
Yemen Arab Republic, the Republic of Yemen occupies the southwest tip of the
Arabian Peninsula on the Red Sea opposite Ethiopia and extends along the
southern part of the Arabian Peninsula on the Gulf of Aden and the Indian
Ocean. Saudi Arabia is to the north and Oman is to the east. The country is
about the size of France. A 700-mile (1,130-km) narrow coastal plain in the
south gives way to a mountainous region and then a plateau area.

Government

Parliamentary republic.

History

The history of Yemen dates
back to the Minaean (1200–650
B.C.
) and Sabaean
(750–115
B.C.
) kingdoms. Ancient Yemen (centered
around the port of Aden) engaged in the lucrative myrrh and frankincense
trade. It was invaded by the Romans (1st century
A.D.
) as well as the Ethiopians and Persians (6th
century
A.D.
). In
A.D.
628 it converted to Islam and in the 10th century came under the control of
the Rassite dynasty of the Zaidi sect, which remained involved in North
Yemeni politics until 1962. The Ottoman Turks nominally occupied the area
from 1538 to the decline of their empire in 1918.

The northern
portion of Yemen was ruled by imams until a pro-Egyptian military coup took
place in 1962. The junta proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic, and after a
civil war in which Egypt's Nasser and the USSR supported the revolutionaries
and King Saud of Saudi Arabia and King Hussein of Jordan supported the
royalists, the royalists were finally defeated in mid-1969.

The
southern port of Aden, strategically located at the opening of the Red Sea,
was colonized by Britain in 1839, and by 1937, with an expansion of its
territory, it was known as the Aden Protectorate. In the 1960s the
Nationalist Liberation Front (NLF) fought against British rule, which led to
the establishment of the People's Republic of Southern Yemen on Nov. 30,
1967. In 1979, under strong Soviet influence, the country became the only
Marxist state in the Arab world.

The Republic of Yemen was
established on May 22, 1990, when pro-Western Yemen and the Marxist Yemen
Arab Republic merged after 300 years of separation to form the new nation.
The poverty and decline in Soviet economic support in the south was an
important incentive for the merger. The new president, Ali Abdullah Saleh,
was elected by the parliaments of both countries.